Divine Foolishness
by Roses of Sharon
Summary: She likes to think its an improvement.  She likes to think he thinks she's beautiful.  She likes to think he cares.  SasuSaku.


Disclaimer: I do not own _Naruto_.

Summary: She likes to think its improvement. She likes to think he thinks she's beautiful. She likes to think he loves her. SasuSaku.

Author's Note: My longest story in forever! It's a bit of a thank you for the many favorites and reviews, and partially just a reward for me (I've been dying to write something longer…).

Pictures

Sakura has exactly two pictures of pre-Orochimaru Sasuke.

One she snuck on the day they graduated from the Ninja Academy. Her hair was long, back then. He was so much taller than her. He stared straight ahead, glaring into the camera, even through the flash. She smiled, wrapping her arms around his stiff body.

The other was with Kakashi-sensei and Naruto, back when they were Team Seven. (They'll still be a team, she tells herself, Naruto will bring Sasuke back, and they'll be Team Seven again.) Her hair is blowing in the wind, and she's still focused on Sasuke.

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Sakura has about fifty million pictures of post-Orochimaru Sasuke. They're Team Seven again, only they're called Team Kakashi now, and they're Jounin (even Sasuke, who blew away all the other chuunin at his first Jounin Exam, except Naruto, who's only excuse for not already being Jounin was, "I was too busy chasing after Sasuke-temee, dattebayo!")

They're Team Kakashi – a team with five members. (They've grown used to Sai, and he decided to stay, despite, he says, the fact that Sakura's face is taking years off his life.) 

Sasuke sometimes even initiates the picture-taking session. He's changed, since he came back. She has scrapbooks full of the two of them, with the cherry blossom trees, on the bridge, in the river, behind the school, training on the training grounds, with the rest of Team Kakashi, with Team Gai, with InoShikaChou, with Temari, with Gaara, with Kankurou, with Naruto, with Sai, with Kaka-sensei… alone.

Only one thing has changed in the pictures, really.

Now, when she holds him, his eyes are focused on her, too. And he doesn't glare at the camera so much.

She likes to think its improvement.

She likes to think he thinks she's beautiful.

She likes to think he loves her.

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Sakura has a hobby. It's more profound, more emotional than training, which she loves, and more relaxing than cooking, which she also loves. It's not quite as all-consuming as her other hobbies, which include Sasuke, more training, and Sasuke.

But it's her own, and she spends as much time as she can find indulging it.

Carefully, Sakura cuts the small white hearts from the piece of paper. She's trying to conserve as much paper as possible, because she loves trees, and she hates the way they have to cut them down, but there's only so much she can do. She's using a kunai, so that when someone – probably Naruto or Sai, maybe even Sasuke – walks in, she can say she was training. Cutting little white paper hearts out of paper has given her precision and patience.

Carefully, she pulls out the little tiny bottle of glue that she made – it take much time to make, but it sticks like nothing before and dries perfectly clear, completely unnoticeable to the naked eye. She wonders if Sasuke can see it with his Sharingan, but doubts it. Maybe she'll ask him one of these days.

She dips the paint brush she bought especially for this job into the jar, and just as carefully paints one side of the hearts with the glue, a thin, shining layer of it.

And then she places them, one by one, on the page which holds only one picture, a classic. A picture, if she wanted to admit it, that she took completely by chance. The background is foggy, grey and green. The foreground is beauty. Hotness, if she wants to be kind, but Sasuke is beautiful, though she doesn't like to say that about him. He is fighting, moving, sparring… and his eyes are red. It is beautiful. So is he.

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Sakura has a collection. Many collections, actually – a collection of kunai, of jutsus, of medical equipment…

She also has a collection of scrapbooks. Almost every single one was made by her own hands and hers alone. It is her one release, and she allows no hands but her own to do the painstaking work that goes into each and every one of those books.

The first is of the Ninja Academy. Even if she has only one photograph of Sasuke there, she has quite a few of Naruto, and some of Kakashi, and billions of her and Ino as children, and a few random shots of the others: Team Nine, Team Eight, Team Gai, and her parents.

Then there is one, and only one, of pre-Orochimaru Team Seven. She has one picture of their team together. That is all. But she has memoirs, fallen leaves, pressed flowers, programs, and tickets. She has her memories, still. She will never let go of those.

And then there are at least two of post-Orochimaru Team Seven, when it was just Kakashi and Naruto and her. She wonders if the ones of Jiraiya-and-Naruto and her-and-Tsunade-shishou count as post-Orochimaru Team Seven, but decides against it. It is a different era, a time when she became strong.

There is a special book, a book where she keeps a record of all her dates. The one she went on with Gaara, when she was in the Sand. He took her to a ridiculously expensive restaurant where all the waitresses flirted ridiculously with Gaara until Sakura glared at them (then back away at an equally ridiculous pace), and she discovered at the end of the night that he had only taken her out to ask about Naruto. She had grinned, and told him everything she knew (including the latest gossip on Hinata).

Then there are the three dates with Rock Lee (all of which ended with her locking herself in her room with embarrassment), the one with Kiba (cute, but not her type), Hyuuga Neji (Neji was all Tenten's, she had decided after that single date), and a few with Naruto (before he had noticed Hinata for who she really was.) She saves the last half of the book in the hope that maybe Sasuke will, one day, take her on a date (or sixty).

And then there are the five books of post-Orochimaru Team Kakashi. She carefully glues the next picture in the sixth book. If Sasuke didn't start refusing to take pictures with her soon, then she would have to spend a lot more money on paper and binding. She sighs, but can't really feel depressed about it – it's better to have too many pictures than just one.

Just one picture, which you have to tie your dreams to for years and years, hoping against hope that the boy that you loved – love – will come back to you. Years of staring at his face in the picture, his cold, impassive face, and wishing that the look you dream of seeing in his eyes would actually be there, and that he would hold you tight, just as you held him.

She wonders if love makes all people fools, or if it is only her.

But then she takes a look at the people around her, and realizes that no one she knows has ever actually followed the twenty-fifth rule.

She sighs.

If we are all fools, she thinks, at least it is divine foolishness.

For what better cause for foolishness is there than love?


End file.
